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Holo Theme Is Now Mandatory For Android Devices
tripleevenfall writes in about the new theme changes in Android 4.0. From the article: "Starting with Android 4.0, support for the 'Holo' theme will be mandatory for phones and tablets that have the Android Market installed. Holo is the stock Android theme, known for its sharp angles, thin lines and blue hue. Third-party developers can now create apps and widgets using the default Android aesthetic, knowing that's how it'll look on every major Ice Cream Sandwich device that has the Android Market. "
This is not banning custom themes; instead it is merely giving developers a consistent theme that is guaranteed to be installed if they want a consistent look across all devices. There are even a few improvements to the style protocol to help developers deal with dark and light themes.
This doesn't appear to address fragmentation at all. To the contrary, fragmentation will be even easier, according to the article:
Recall that TouchWiz is the reason the Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab won't get Ice Cream Sandwich despite being only months old. Just look at this chart of the completely broken upgrade cycle for Android smartphones--and note the 2 1/2 year old iPhone 3GS can run the latest version of iOS. The problem is that the carrier's business model is to sell you a new phone every six months. It's not in their best interests to provide upgrades and support. As far as they're concerned, interaction with the customer is over the moment you purchase the phone, so they don't give a crap about trying to provide a cohesive platform that interoperates with competing Android phones.
Seamless experiences win out in the long term. We saw this when gaming moved from PCs to consoles in the 2000s, and it's happening now in the transition to the post-PC era. The previous mobile web OS usage article raised a lot of eyebrows, because despite the fact Android has greater volume, it's turns out that it's actually #3 in web use behind Java ME and iOS, which means the majority of Android users are not using their phones like smartphones, for whatever reason. On top of that, developer support for Android dropped by one-third over the course of 2011 despite an increase in activations.
The fragmentation issue is something Google desperately needs to solve if it wants to avoid the same fate that desktop Linux did. Throwing something out there, calling it open, and letting "choice" steer the ship isn't going to do it. Requiring support for a theme is a step in the right direction, but all it means is that there is a default theme, not a standardized one.
Will the users be allowed to change the theme?
They're still restricting the OEMs and carriers ability to customize the theme's look by using the Android Market stick.
That's still good if it makes the UI consistent though, compared to iOS and WP7, the Android UI is all over the place.
This space for rent.
Really? Having a consistently-available UI is "a wall"? Or even the "foundations of a wall"? I think we've forgotten what a "walled garden" actually means.
There's no wall here at all, just a foundation. You can still do whatever the heck you want with your device as a consumer, and this is just saying that manufacturer's shouldn't completely break the underlying UI structure, even if they want to supplant it with some theme of their own. "Do what you want with the field, just don't salt the Earth so nobody else can use it".
There's no wall here at all, just a foundation. You can still do whatever the heck you want with your device as a consumer, and this is just saying that manufacturer's shouldn't completely break the underlying UI structure, even if they want to supplant it with some theme of their own. "Do what you want with the field, just don't salt the Earth so nobody else can use it".
"manufacturer's themes", that is. Not a plural apostrophe.
Without exception, every single time anyone has used the word "fanboy" (regardless of how you spell it), they have really meant "someone who likes something more than I do".
Holo theme is not mandatory, only support for the Holo theme for devices that use the Android marketplace. So applications can be written that use the Holo theme with some confidence that they will display correctly. This is a good thing. It gives developers a minimum standard look and feel that is required to work.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
No, it generally means "someone who likes something different from the thing I really really like in the same domain". See sports teams, etc. Generally its a result of it being a zero sum game (Only one team can win the super bowl/world cup/whatever), whether that means there's an actual limitation or a perceived one (I only get one phone so my choice is the best, or "My mom said I can only get one console, so that one that I have is obviously the best"). Those of use who recognize that one can often have more than one flavor of ice cream/console/operating system/mobile device/programming language/text editor are perplexed by the behavior, but understanding the base motivation helps a bit.
(Except of course for people who like the Dodgers. They objectively suck, and their fans are doo doo heads. That's a fact.)
I thought it read "Halo theme".
...for me has always been that any OS or device I've used has been riddled with bone headed design decision. Things that break easily with normal use. UI elements that are the wrong size or in the wrong place. Poor choice of fonts. In all honesty, you'd have to be pretty simple minded to love every product that comes out of a single company or every bit of software that comes from the same developer. I mean look at the Ford vs. Chevy guys. That's the ultimate outcome of customer loyalty: a lack of thinking. Given that most of us here are rugged individualists, it's a natural assumption that we're going to want to do things our own way. Sometimes that will be just giving in an saying, "Oh the heck with it, Apple makes a pretty decent device and I don't have the time to fiddle". Other times it will be, "Good lord Microsoft can't code a decent UI to find their way out of a virtual box of nothing. Screw this I'm going back to (insert better OS choice for your needs here)". Show me a person who says, "Everything that (insert company or developer) created has always been perfect and I've had no need to change a thing" and I'll show you a liar. Config files, preferences, options, themes, control panels all exist for a reason: nothing is perfect.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
And here I thought that Spice & Wolf's Holo was going to be seen on every Android device. Certainly would've made my day brighter to see her smiling face everywhere. :(
No, I think it's generally applied to people who are incapable of seeing the flaws in the things they like, and cannot have a rational discussion about them. It's people who somehow have an emotional investment in their chosen product being "the best" and anyone who chooses differently, for any reason, is "wrong".
It's perfectly fine to have a favorite, it's not perfectly fine to be blinded to alternatives.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Colors are not the problem. The problem is apps designed for phones running on tablets, or apps made for tablets running on phones, or basically any app designed for one platform running on a different one with a different UI. Touch-screens can be single or multi-touch, most apps don't adjust to that. There are even apps that were designed to be used with a multi-button mouse that are being run on touch screens, where the buttons are too small, scrollbars are irrelevant, etc., etc.
UI fail is getting more and more common since developers are assuming what sort of hardware will be used, often incorrectly.
I don't farking care about the colors, but when you want to scroll by swiping, and the app only uses scrollbars, UI fail. The buttons are too small because you're on a tablet but the app thinks it's on a phone, UI fail.
On the desktop, there are "accelerators", which are keyboard shortcuts. Nice, until you don't have a keyboard. I can't even get the mouseover text on xkcd because I don't have a mouse.
The problem is that the carrier's business model is to sell you a new phone every six months.
Why in the world would they do that? The carrier's primary goal is to get customers is to commit to the most expensive 2 year contract possible. The insane overage rates are really just to prod customers into upgrading to more expensive contracts is all. Smartphones require the most expensive contracts because they consume voice minutes, SMS texts and data more than any other type of phone. Thus carriers subsidize the phones to give customers the equipment to consume those resources. The ideal customer is one with a modern enough smartphone to require an expensive contract, who that keeps that same smartphone as long as possible.
Does your monthly rate decrease after your contract is up? Does it decrease if you buy your own phone straight out? Of course not. Yet the carrier makes even more money off of you because you're still paying a monthly rate that factors in the subsidization cost of the phone.
So to sum it up, there are only two reasons a carrier wants to put new cell phones in their customers' hands. To upgrade customers with regular or premium phones to smartphones that require a more expensive contract, and to keep the more demanding customers from switching to other carriers because they offer more cutting edge hardware.
Better known as 318230.
I thought the whole point of themed GUI toolkits was to separate the policy and details of presentation graphics from the applications. Does all of this suggest that the application actually requests or controls the theme, rather than the user? The last thing I want, as a user, is some application overriding my UI preferences such as theme and displaying differently!
To me, the proper market restriction for quality would be that all applications must be usable with a set of test/regression themes which exercise the extremes and corner cases of themes, such as differing contrast, brightness, and saturation levels in the palettes. This would include test themes geared towards color-blind users, etc. It is the app which should be forced to be theme-neutral, not the phone or user which should be forced to have a fixed theme!
Except that this is patently untrue in at least one instance that I can think of: Apple products. The most vicious Apple-bashing posts I've ever read were from Apple fanboys who got their feelings hurt when they found out some bug was unfixable or a key feature was changed to some other behaviour. They (perhaps I should say "we"? But I don't see myself as a fanboy, despite having a lot of apple gear) are also quite capable of having reasonable discussions about the failings of their favourite products when not being attacked by "outsiders" and fandroids. You're right that it's the emotional investment that makes the fanboy wars so nasty, but don't make the mistake of believing that these people all are incapable of seeing the flaws in the products they've invested their emotions in. It's less about "blind faith" and more about "let's keep our dirty laundry in the family."
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
Except it is true and the drivel you posted shows that you don't understand the difference between a fanboy and an upset customer.
*Thankyou*. I'm an Android dev too, and it constantly astonishes me that the form of "fragmentation" that most of the tech world complains about (OS version number) has nothing to do with the form of "fragmentation" that actually causes me any sort of real problem (screen aspect ratios / device bugs / differing OS implementations).
Except you didn't read my post properly. What I was saying is that the fanboy often is the upset customer. The person who comes to slashdot to viciously defend his favourite phone is often the one screeching loudest about some flaw in the phone or its os on the support forums. Just because he doesn't acknowledge his phone's flaws here doesn't mean he doesn't acknowledge those flaw to himself (and subsequently rage about those flaws in a friendlier forum).
Shit, I just been trolled, haven't I? Ah well.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
The main fragmentation that interest developers is the one between platforms, not within a platform. If Apple and RIM both switched to Android, it would be much easier to develop for mobile devices. They add a lot of fragmentation by continuing to push their proprietary platform. Google actually removes fragmentation by giving away for free an OS that anyone can use. There would be much more fragmentation in the mobile world if HTC, Motorola, Sony, Samsung and LG all pushed their own OS like Apple and RIM are doing.
I think you're in the wrong - we're trying to quantify "fan" and "fanboy/fanboi", which is a much much more radical, rabid version of a fan. The type of behavior you'll see when presented with some evidence of a flaw or weakness in comparison to a competitor is flat out denial or applying spin (aka resolving cognitive dissonance). Given the emotional ties, there's no way they can then just go and admit in another forum that "ok yeah, that sucks and product X is better". They truly believe what they're saying. Otherwise that's just trolling or flat out lying, and I don't think those are quite the same behaviors.
But it's the emotional ties that make them so vitriolic about the flaws they do find in their favourite product. Ah well, it would take some actual research to sort out who's right, and I for one won't be doing that.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
it's Maemo!
It's okay, I think the people who insist on using the term "walled garden" have forgotten exactly how easy it is to get mauled by a rabid bear in the "wilderness," too, so I'd say that makes it roughly even.
Seamless experiences win out in the long term. We saw this when gaming moved from PCs to consoles in the 2000s, and it's happening now in the transition to the post-PC era.
It's the business model, +5 Informative by Overly Critical Guy:
Seamless experiences always win out over time. We saw it when gaming shifted from PCs to consoles, and now the industry is shifting from desktops to mobile devices.
These were both first posts in each respective story.
Then that should be "manufactures' themes", since there are several manufacturers, each with their own themes ;)
I'm talking about wouldn't it be better for the platform from a development point of view if the phone manufacturers came up with a strict UI guide for shipping themes this would give the flexibility to create their own branded one but also allow some platform stability for devs.
I don't know anything about android development so don't blast me for not know just looking at this from the outside.
That even more devices wont have default access to the market.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The stink coming from Bonch doesn't originate from his t-shirt.
damaged by dogma